Glia cells
(Greek for “glue,” also known as glial) hold the brain’s neurons
together and protect the cells that determine our thoughts and
behaviors. But glia cells have now been found to do much more: a
mechanism within the glia cells also regulate the synapses, sorting
information for learning purposes, according to Ph.D. student Maurizio
De Pittà of TAU’s Schools of Physics and Astronomy and Electrical
Engineering.

“Glia cells are like the brain’s supervisors. They
control the transfer of information between neurons, affecting how the
brain processes information and learns.”

De Pittà’s research, led
by his TAU supervisor Prof. Eshel Ben-Jacob, along with Vladislav Volman
of The Salk Institute and the University of California at San Diego and
Hugues Berry of the Université de Lyon in France, has developed the
first computer model that incorporates the influence of glia cells on
synaptic information transfer.

The model can also be implemented
in technologies based on brain networks such as microchips and computer
software, Prof. Ben-Jacob says, and can aid in research on brain
disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease and epilepsy.

Regulating the brain’s “social network”
The
brain is constituted of two main types of cells: neurons and glia.
Neurons fire off signals that dictate how we think and behave, using
synapses to pass along the message from one neuron to another.
Scientists theorize that memory and learning are dictated by synaptic
activity because they are “plastic,” with the ability to adapt to
different stimuli.

But Ben-Jacob and colleagues suspected that
glia cells were even more central to how the brain works, particularly
the astrocytes (a form of glia cells) in the hippocampus. Glia cells are
abundant in the brain’s hippocampus and the cortex, the two parts of
the brain that have the most control over the brain’s ability to process
information, learn and memorize. In fact, for every neuron cell, there
are two to five glia cells.